probation and parole

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday to release rapper Meek Mill from prison, where he had been held for the past five months for violating his terms of probation, underlines the need for reforms in the state’s community supervision system, says former NYC probation chief Vincent Schiraldi.

ByMichelle S. Phelps |January 31, 2018

The Philadelphia rapper sent back to prison over a technical violation of his probation terms is just another example of how the resource-strained community supervision system sets former inmates—the majority of them young men of color- up for failure, writes a University of Minnesota professor.

Twenty leading parole and probation administrators say the nation’s community corrections system has become “too big to succeed.” They endorsed a report by the Columbia Justice Lab released Monday showing that nearly five million Americans are under some form of post-incarceration supervision with proportionally little support for rehabilitation programs.

ByMegan Hadley |October 13, 2017

“If we didn’t exist, no one would invent us,” says former New York Commissioner of Probation Vincent Schiraldi. Speaking this week at the Smart on Crime conference at John Jay College, he said the punitive approach taken by probation and parole agencies made them major drivers of mass incarceration.

The country’s leading community corrections executives endorsed an August, 2017 Harvard study calling for a transformation of America’s probation and parole system. According to the study, the current system further impoverishes the poorest Americans and does little to improve public safety.

ByBruce Western and Vincent Schiraldi |July 20, 2017

Over 4.7 million Americans are under “community corrections” supervision today—more than twice the number of individuals behind bars. Rethinking that 19th-century approach is crucial if we want to end mass incarceration, say the authors of a Harvard Kennedy School paper released today.

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William Edwards, released from jail with a GPS tracking device that he has to pay for, is one of thousands of poor defendants left at the mercy of an ‘E-carceration” system increasingly run by for-profit services, writes an attorney who is leading a class action lawsuit combating the practice.

The “piecemeal” approach by state and federal court approach to addressing trial-level errors fails to account for the complex ways that seemingly independent errors interact with one another, writes a professor at the Northeastern University School of Law.

Vox news reporter German Lopez reports there were plenty of reasons for the low turnout from white nationalists at Sunday's Unite the Right rally, including alt.right organizers' fear of retribution. He quotes neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin as warning prospective participants: "Getting doxed as a neo-Nazi street fighter will ruin your life, forever.”

A Brooklyn, N.Y,-based grassroots group is teaching people with substance abuse disorder how to avoid getting ensnared in the criminal justice system. Organizer Jason Del Aguila says the first step is empowering individuals in their encounters with the courts and police.

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